My daughter’s red shoes on the international day for the elimination of violence against women. Prevention must begin at an early age by educating boys and girls in respectful relationships and gender equality.

Born in Milan in 1957, Grandi has spent most of his career in the UN, working for the UNHCR in Sudan, Syria, Turkey and Iraq among other places and leading the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) from 2010 until 2014.

His nomination not only continues the proud tradition of Italians in key international positions – Romano Prodi as president of the European Commission from 1999 to 2004, Mario Draghi as current president of the European Central Bank and Federica Mogherini as the European Union’s current high representative for foreign affairs – but it can also be seen as recognition of the front-line role played by Italy in Europe’s worst refugee crisis since the second world war.

Last month UNHCR said it expected 1.4 million refugees to arrive in Europe in 2015 and 2016 in search of “safety and international protection” from terrorism, war and persecution in their home countries. The vast majority are Muslim.

Grandi now has the challenge of ensuring that these people are not turned into scapegoats as western countries ratchet up the ‘war on terror’ following the 13 November attacks by Islamic jihadists in Paris in which at least 129 people were killed.

The day after the tragedy Poland’s future minister for European affairs said it would be “impossible” for the new conservative government to accept previously agreed EU-mandate quotas for refugees amid subsequently confirmed reports that one of the Paris terrorists had transited through Greece in October. The others were all allegedly French or Belgian nationals.

Similar sentiments have been expressed in Italy by Matteo Salvini, leader of the anti-immigration and anti-Europe Northern League, and he is not alone.

However, as the speaker of Italy’s Chamber of Deputies and former UNHCR Italy spokesperson Laura Boldrini pointed out, refugees are often “the first victims of terror”.

“Those who want to send them back are giving Islamic State a gift by allowing it to step forward as their only protection,” she said in an interview to L’Espresso magazine published 18 November.

“Those who say all Muslims are the same make a few thousand militiamen representative of billions of people. It’s madness,” she added.

There is a ghost haunting schools up and down Italy. It’s called ‘gender theory’ and it is spooking efforts to promote non-discrimination and respect for diversity among the country’s youth.

Like many, I also have my reservations about prime minister Matteo Renzi’s Good School reform, but I do think provisions set out in article 16 for promoting “sexual equality and the prevention of gender-based violence and all forms of discrimination” among pupils and students are laudable. Or rather, I believe such provisions are the prerequisite for building a fair and tolerant society and as such I would be concerned if they didn’t exist.

Many people don’t see it that way, however. Conservative Catholic groups, right-wing politicians and organisations defending the ‘traditional’ family have mounted an alarmist – and alarming – ideological campaign against the measures, warning parents of the dangers of a purported ‘theory’ that isn’t even mentioned in the law and which academics say doesn’t exist.

The problem is with the ‘gender’ word. Reactionaries are worried that the use of this term typically referring to cultural and social rather than biological differences between the sexes will pave the way for schools to teach pupils that there are no differences and that each one of us is free to determine who and what we want to be irrespective of how we were born.

Obviously this is far from the truth. However, in the absence of dispassionate debate around the issue and a clear sense of how the new provisions will be applied (it is still early days) even the most open-minded and reasonable parents are concerned.

The irony is that not many seem to know how and why the ghost of gender theory appeared in the first place, or realise that it has little to do with the provisions set out in the Good School reform.

The term ‘gender theory’ came to the fore in France in 2012 during debate over a bill legalising same-sex marriage and adoption there. It became the battle cry of the leading opponent to these provisions, the association La Manif pour tous, and subsequently found its way into the lexicon of the sister organisation La Manif pour tous Italia, founded in 2013 in opposition to a bill before the Italian parliament criminalising homophobia and transphobia.

Debate on this bill extending existing anti-discrimination legislation to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual people coincided with discussion of another separate but related initiative involving adoption by parliament of a new strategic action plan against sexual and gender-based violence.

It also forms the basis for the provisions set out in the Good School law.

Indeed, article 16 of Renzi’s reform makes explicit reference to an article in the 2013 strategic action plan providing for “adequate training of school staff in favour of relationship and against gender discrimination and violence” and “awareness-raising, information and training of students in order to prevent violence against women and gender discrimination, also through an adequate approach to the theme in text books”.

These provisions fuelled the campaign of the ‘gender theory’ scaremongers and fear gradually began to grip the institutions: in April 2014 education undersecretary Gabriele Toccafondi blocked a programme for schools “based on sexual orientation and gender identity” run by the national office against racial discrimination (UNAR) under the auspices of the education ministry, prompting the authoritative Società Italiana delle Storiche (Italian Society of Women Historians), many of whose members have long been active in the field of gender studies, to intervene.

In a letter to education minister Stefania Giannini the academics highlighted the “partiality” and “erroneousness” of the debate so far. The category ‘gender’, they said, introduces “less a theory than a conceptual tool for considering and analysing the historical social realities concerning the relationship between the sexes in all their complexity and articulation”, showing that “there has not been and is not just one way of being men and women, but a multiplicity of identities and experiences that have varied over time and space”.

However this did little to assuage fears, which on the contrary continued to grow as the Good School bill – presented in March 2015 – made its way through parliament. In July 2015 the newly elected mayor of Venice Luigi Brugnaro ordered the withdrawal of books exploring diversity issues from the city’s nurseries; and in late October the Liguria regional council went so far as to vote to explicitly ban ‘gender theory’ from being taught in the region’s schools.

Giannini intervened formally in July and then again at the start of the new school year in September with a circular aiming to lay the discussion to rest once and for all.

In it she insisted that the provisions contained in the law did not intend to “promote thoughts or actions inspired by ideologies of any kind”, but rather to transmit “knowledge and awareness of the constitutionally guaranteed rights and responsibilities of the individual”. She also reaffirmed that the contents of specific teaching programmes must in any event be set out in the academic plan that every school is required to draw up and present to parents for approval, meaning that families will be informed and have a measure of control.

Exactly how the provisions of article 16 will be applied remain to be seen, and it is reasonable to assume that the ‘message’ that reaches pupils and students will depend to a great extent on the sensibilities and preparation of the individual teacher or school.

However, in a modern, secular and open society if measures originally aimed at creating equality and respect for women are also extended to LGBT people, surely that has to be a good thing.

I don’t want to give prime minister Matteo Renzi any more coverage than he already gets, but I was struck by his comments earlier today on the performance of veteran Burmese opposition leader and Nobel Peace Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi and her party National League for Democracy in landmark parliamentary elections on Sunday.

“It swells the heart,” he is reported to have said of the still provisional results that look set to give NLD a majority in parliament, ending decades of military and then semi-civilian rule.

He then recalled the “beautiful words” on the “politics of kindness” spoken by Suu Kyi during her Nobel Lecture in Oslo in June 2012, 21 years after she had been awarded the prize.

“Even the briefest touch of kindness can lighten a heavy heart. Kindness can change the lives of people,” he quoted her as saying.

In a world visibly suffering from ‘compassion fatigue’ – in Europe with respect to the refugee tragedy playing out on our borders – how good we have become at forgetting this fundamental truth.

Thank you Matteo Renzi for drawing my attention to these words and to Suu Kyi’s broader speech.